Read my full story on Digital Media Buzz: News Aggregators — Parasites or Saviors?
A respected judge, a Pulitzer-winning columnist, and a newspaper-industry attorney have stoked a fiery debate over the past couple of weeks with a proposed change in U.S. copyright law, the latest bid to bail out dying print factories.
The group proposes — and is urging all journalists, newspapers and industry organizations to lobby for — making it illegal to link to material on the Web without permission of the copyright holder.
It’s a bold assault on several important principles. The first is the truism that while copyright holders own their articles, they do not own the news itself — the words in an article are created by the writer, but the facts are not — no one owns them. Judge Richard Posner, Cleveland Plain Dealer columnist Connie Schultz and David and Daniel Marburger are evoking a nearly century-old Supreme Court decision over reporting of World War I. That decision helped newspapers in their desperate battle to stiffle the young radio industry — going so far as to try to prevent radio from reporting the results of presidential elections. In its 1976 revamp of copyright law, Congress nullified the Supreme Court ruling.
But the group also takes aim at cherished “fair use” exceptions built into the copyright law — rules that allow Americans to paraphrase, quote and link back to news stories in order to comment on them. Judge Posner would effectively ban any links on the internet, without first getting permission to link. Schultz and the Marburgers are more surgical — they admit that such links benefit newspapers. They want to be paid for links.
Ironically behind the scenes, newspapers work frantically to get links from Google and anyone else who will link to them. Every major media organization has search engine specialists who use every technology and strategy possible to move higher in Google standings. And they push the public to share links to stories. Connie Schultz’s own column has multiple buttons urging readers to post her writing to Digg, Reddit and other sites.
While entrepreneurs on the Web have innovated and built business models for sustainable revenue, newspapers almost without exception have used their web sites to try to prop up the print product — without success — and so have failed to innovate and commit fully to an internet business model. Now, in desperation, newspapers are looking to Google and others for a slice of revenue they claim is built on their product. And they’re willing to push for changes in law that could dramatically curtail free speech and comment across the Web.
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